


Beyond Horizon

by blueblack-poked-stars (delicate_mageflower)



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Alcohol Abuse, Angst, Anxiety, F/M, Fuck Cerberus, Mutual Pining, Self-Loathing, Sole Survivor (Mass Effect), migraines
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-02
Updated: 2017-06-02
Packaged: 2018-11-08 05:31:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11075040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/delicate_mageflower/pseuds/blueblack-poked-stars
Summary: After their confrontation, neither Shepard nor Kaidan are handling things particularly well.





	Beyond Horizon

**Author's Note:**

> Carrie is undiagnosed bipolar with severe C-PTSD, and I very heavily headcanon Kaidan as autistic and as having generalized anxiety.

“I’ve had enough of this colony,” Carrie Shepard tells Joker over the comm, and there are no words for how thoroughly she means it.

Seeing Kaidan again— _Commander_ Kaidan Alenko now, no less—has shaken her to her core.

She doesn’t blame him for how he reacted, though, and she doesn’t want to. But that does not mean she wouldn’t give anything in her power to change it, neither does it do anything to quell how much it hurt or how hard it was to watch him walk away.

Far more painful than the ache in her knuckles after hitting the wall in her cabin. She could do this a thousand more times and it would never compare, of that she is certain. To the port observation deck it is, then.

This is easier than spending all night in her cabin screaming and castigating herself. This is easier.

“Shep…”

If Kasumi says anything else after Shepard brushes past her without a word to make her way behind the bar, Shepard doesn’t hear. From there, there is only the sound of bottles and glasses and liquid pouring until she can’t see straight.

***

Kaidan does not want to speak to anyone or deal with anything about this shitshow.

“Commander—”

“Not now,” he interrupts without even looking, and he heads straight to his cabin. His head is already pounding from how on edge he is, and right now he needs space and silence above all else.

He’s heard the rumors just like everyone else, and of course he’d wanted them to be true, but he’d wanted to hear it from _her._ Not to just happen upon her with no previous word, and certainly not to receive confirmation that the _other_ rumors were true, that she’s with Cerberus now.

How the hell could _that_ possibly have happened?

And why on earth didn’t she contact him? Who even is she now?

Who is _he?_

It was nice while it lasted with that Citadel doctor, he decides. It’s for the best this happened before anything so much as tried to really get serious there, before it moved past just the couple of casual coffee dates they’ve had thus far, because there’s no way he can see anyone else right now.

 _Of course_ he’s still in love with Shepard. _Of course_ he never stopped loving her.

He wasn’t _really_ sure he was ready to move on yet, anyway, or how serious this attempt at a new relationship _could_ have gotten. In a way, this strangely makes things easier. Because he may not know who Shepard is anymore, and he may not know exactly how to process any of this yet, but what he now knows for damn sure is that she _is_ alive, and that this changes _everything._

How he spoke to her, though…

“Shit,” he says to himself as his door closes behind him. _“Shit.”_

He didn’t want to do that. He didn’t mean to speak that way. He doesn’t know how that happened, doesn’t know why he did.

He is lost. He is so lost.

He hurt her badly, he knows he did. Maybe he shouldn’t have reacted so quickly, maybe he should have heard her out, maybe…

 _Cerberus,_ though. It’s Cerberus. Cerberus is _evil,_ and that’s a clear cut issue. He has no doubt about that. They’ve put _her_ through so much, too, and so he knows she has to know it just as well as he—far better, even.

How the hell could this have happened?

To see her again, though, to _touch_ her…his head is spinning. As well as throbbing.

Shit, this isn’t going to be good.

He wonders how she’s doing, how she’s handling this. He wonders what she’s thinking, what she’s feeling. He thinks of her. He thinks of only her.

***

Shepard is quietly crying into an empty glass.

That kind of crying that is too still, too silent. It’s downright unnerving, to her most of all.

She’s just going to keep pretending that this isn’t where Kasumi stays. She’s just going to keep pretending that Kasumi isn’t there.

Actually, maybe she isn’t. Shepard looks around despite herself, and she appears to be alone. Granted, Kasumi could simply be cloaked, she realizes. Shepard finds herself appreciating the thought if that is the case.

“Fuck this,” she says to herself when the room begins to move without her. She decides there’s no reason to stay down there. Liquor is portable and she’s drinking alone, anyway. She picks up as many bottles from the shelf as she can carry and makes her way upstairs.

If there is anyone there, no one stops her.

She sets what she’s brought with her onto the tables beside the bed before she curls up into it, and that’s where she breaks, briefly allowing herself to shake and sob into her hands before she sits back up to tend to those drinks she is all too desperate for.

Kaidan is right, of course. She knows this, she knows what Cerberus is capable of, what Cerberus has done, and she hates herself so fucking much for what _she’s_ done.

For working with Cerberus, for colluding with the Illusive Man even if their goal this time is the same, for…fuck, for _surviving._

She’s dreamt of Akuze every single night since this all started (every night she’s actually slept, that is). Cerberus would have seen her dead or tortured then, but now they need her? Now she’s useful, at their disposal?

They brought her back to life, sure, but for _what?_ And yes, the Alliance has been dragging their heels when it comes to the Reapers, when it comes to what really matters right now, but she’d had a good crew on the SR-1, and most of them made it. One of them could have moved forward, could have done something. It doesn’t need to be her. She doesn’t know why it should be her.

They should have fucking let her rest.

She doesn’t know what’s in this bottle, except that it tastes like varren piss—but _oh,_ how it makes her head spin.

She likes this one.

***

Kaidan is seeking something soft, the kind of thing a soldier’s life is not typically suited for.

He needs to find comfort, even in something as small as a soothing texture to run his hands over, to bring himself back to where he needs to be.

His mind is in overload and he can’t keep his thoughts straight. Anxiety is rising but he’s glad to be alone. Right now, he _needs_ be alone. Any outside stimulus not in his control might bring him into a complete spiral. Serving as long as he has means he usually has a better handle on this. In fact, he often uses his tendency to hyperfocus and fixate, to absorb and sink into surrounding emotions and environments as deeply as he does to his advantage, and he’s a better marine because of it.

Right now, though…

Right now, he doesn’t think he could take anyone so much as breathing in his general direction without going into sensory meltdown.

And his head is getting worse. It’s getting much worse.

He grips a blanket, the best thing he can get his hands on, but it’s less than ideal. It’s military issue, strictly utilitarian. It’ll keep a person relatively warm at night, sure, but that’s the extent of it. There is no softness or comfort, and it isn’t enough.

She was so pale, so thin. He remembers calling her a ghost and that wasn’t how he meant it, but… _shit,_ that really is the best way to describe her. She looks like she’s completely wasting away, that she is less among the living and more…reanimated, and nothing much beyond that. He thinks on how the circles under her eyes nearly distracted him from the harsh scars all along her face. More than that, though…he wonders when the last time she slept was, or even the last time she ate. She definitely doesn’t look like she’s fit for duty.

He doesn’t quite know what to make of all the rumors surrounding her miraculous return, or what is and isn’t possible, but he knows for certain that she _looks_ like someone who has died. All color and weight drained from her face, all light lost from her eyes…she appears as the waking dead, as little more than a shell—no, the _ghost_ of her former self.

 _“Shit,”_ he hisses to himself at the thought, which upsets him so much it physically hurts, and that pain goes straight to his head. “Oh god…”

He realizes in this moment, too, that he’d called her Shepard. Not Carrie, but Shepard, and he knows that can’t have been lost on her. Even worse, though, is how he’d said that he loved her… _loved,_ past tense, implying that he doesn’t love her now.

That couldn’t be further from the truth, despite the ache in his chest at what that means for either of them anymore, but he knows her, knows her self-destructive tendencies, knows how much she faults herself for anything that goes wrong in her presence and how much she can hate herself as a result—which is how he knows she caught that, too, and that it’s weighing on her as heavily as it is him, if not moreso.

His temples are throbbing along with the shooting stabbing pains all around them. The pulsating and piercing in the back of his head, down to the base of his neck, which feels like he’s been hit with a baseball bat. This is escalating far too quickly, and it’s already too late to subdue it before it becomes a real problem.

He’s starting to feel like he might be sick. He holds that blanket tight in his fists and tries to hold onto _himself_ through it as he curls into the fetal position on his bed and desperately moves his thumbs in circles over the coarse and thready material in a vain attempt at keeping himself under control.

***

“To Admiral Kahoku,” Shepard slurs and raises a bottle before she takes another drink.

She’s glad she decided to hide in her cabin. No one needs to see this shit, least of all those who are part of the very organization at fault.

She’s safe in her bed, there’s only so much harm that could come to her here. As long as she stays where she is.

She kind of wants to go pick a fight on Omega, but she’s already far gone enough that she’s not sure how far she could so much as walk.

It’s absolutely for the best that she’s secluding herself like this.

“I bet you’re sure glad you trusted _me_ to figure out this Cerberus bullshit, Admiral,” she says aloud. “Now you’re dead and I’m their bitch.”

This isn’t even about Kaidan anymore, not entirely. It’s quickly becoming more and more about the _why_ behind all this, about where she is and how little she faults him for his reaction, about the fact that she’s not sure she is alive or if this is just some really confusing purgatory, and that she doesn’t know what keeps her where she is.

She tries so hard to defend her actions to herself. She doesn’t quite believe herself yet.

“Make me feel human, Kaidan,” she sighs into the bottom of a bottle.

It’s almost laughable that she thinks on this now, caught up in the midst of a viciously pro-human terrorist organization, but…

She wonders if he’d even realized he called her Shepard. He had fairly easily gotten into the habit of using her first name after their night together before Ilos (which had meant _everything_ to her, and in fact still does), but he couldn’t use it now? She isn’t sure if it would be better or worse if that had been intentional. And the way he said “loved,” as though that feeling has passed—has it? It hasn’t for her, not even close, but she can’t exactly blame him if this is no longer mutual. She understands that he must feel betrayed, that he must be so hurt and feel so alone, but… _fuck,_ she doesn’t want to think about this right now. But neither does she know how to think of anything else.

That’s what alcohol is for, she supposes.

She realizes she can’t feel her face. _That_ took long enough.

This is exactly where she wants to be.

***

Kaidan is feeling _everything._

This is the exact opposite of what he needs.

He needs to sleep this off, that’s all. He simply needs to sleep this off.

He's going to need to contact her again, too, he realizes. There is no way in hell he can leave it the way it ended back there.

He isn’t going to do it _now,_ of course, but he is already reaching for words, for thoughts…anything to try to compose himself and get his head in check. He knows, though, he _knows_ that he has to extend the olive branch from here, and that he is genuinely afraid to think on how she’s handling this.

He just needs space and time to clear his head, to process this without being _so fucking overwhelmed_ by having her right there in front of him. He needs to reach out to her in peace and quiet, and at his own pace.

She’ll understand that much, he knows she will.

He really hopes she’s okay.

***

She is out of liquor and she is starting to feel sick, anyway. She’s decided to lie down, curled up in bed with a pillow over her head.

She contemplates reaching out to him. She knows damn well that she shouldn’t do it now, of course, but it is unbearably tempting and she is only saved by the fact that she doesn’t feel like she could physically make it to her private terminal were she to try. She supposes that’s for the best. She doesn’t know what she’d say, but that’s something to think about while sober.

She also knows, however, that once she is sober, all she’s _actually_ going to do is everything in her power _not_ to think about it.

She’s on a mission, and that has to come first. She has a job to do, and she has already sold her soul to make it even as far as she has, and it isn’t far enough.

The mission comes before absolutely anything, apparently—before her relationships, before her health, before her very _integrity._

Garrus says she’s looking thin, that she’s looking pale. Oh well, she’s dead, anyway.

Kaidan was right. About Cerberus, about everything. Maybe from this point it would be better to simply leave him alone, no matter how much she misses him…no matter how much she _loves_ him. But she already knows well, she will _always_ love him.

***

He curls up under that blanket with a pillow over his head, doing his best to block out the whole of the world around him.

Everything will keep moving. Everything will keep going. Tomorrow he is going to get up and do his duty, just as he would had he not seen her. The galaxy at large is completely unchanged by this event that has shaken him so badly and he has work to do, so he will therefore have to act as though it had not happened.

Everything, even the Reapers, will come around again. He and Shepard are what’s important right now. He and Shepard are what will never happen again.

And the thought of that, in this context…oh god, how much that _hurts._

This all feels so wrong and he doesn’t yet know what to do with it, but he knows he needs to do something. He _will_ message her, and he will make sure to be clear: he is very lost and he will need a lot of time, but he _loves_ her. And he knows well, he will _always_ love her.

**Author's Note:**

> This piece is unbeta'd because today's date is hard for me and therefore I ended up in a weird rush to publish this in hopes of maybe getting some shit out of my system, and I am very grateful as ever to [fereldandoglords](http://archiveofourown.org/users/fereldandoglords) for their understanding and support.


End file.
